2010 年 17 巻 3 号 p. 589-598
Everyone has some experiences of finding innovative ideas while explaining our familiar things. In the present study, we investigate the effects of explanation activities on creative idea generation. Basic design of our experiment comes from Finke's creative cognition approach. In our experiment, in Phase 1, the participants were required to design furniture from given parts with pencil and paper. The products designed in this phase were called pre-products. In Phase 2, the participants explained their products in the explanation condition. In the control condition, the participants engaged in thinking about innovative furniture instead of explaining it. Last, in Phase 3, the participants were required to design innovative furniture by revising their own pre-products.The products designed in this phase were called post-products.
The pre- and post-products were rated from the viewpoint of originality and practicality and categorized based on the rating.Increase of practicality from pre- to post-products was more salient in the explanation condition than increase in the control condition.This result suggests that explanation activities contribute to maintaining high practicality while generating high originality ideas.